KALAMAZOO -- Sing with us: Good beers on the bus go up then down, up then down, up then down. Good beers on the bus go up then down, all the way to the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti this weekend.

OK, so the ending needs a little work, but you get the idea. Anyway, as many of you have read, the annual celebration of Michigan-made beer is Friday and Saturday. KalamaBrew and Taps McFirkin will be on hand living the life, so please meet up with us.

If you want to arrive at the festival in style, get in touch with Chet Emmons, the store manager at Gil's Market which has one of the best beer selections around (more on that later). Emmons is leading a bus trip to the festival. Tickets are $60 and includes the ride and admission to the bash. Emmons will have a pale ale from Bravo!, a Kalamazoo Italian restaurant that started making hand-crafted beers in October (more on that later, too). Seats are still available.

"Once people get the beer in the system, they start meeting new people ... by the end of the bus trip, they're all acquainted," Emmons said.

If you're interested, meet at Gil's Market, 8005 Douglas Ave., at 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The bus leaves at 11 a.m. The festival runs from 1-6 p.m. The bus will leave at 8 p.m.

To sign up, call Emmons at (269) 649-1802 or (269) 720- 6176.

For our friends to the north, there's also a party wagon leaving from the Hopcat in Grand Rapids. Give them a call at (616) 451-4677 for more details or to grab a seat.

Watch this KalamaBrew video below from the Winter Beer Festival to get an idea of what the bus trip and festival will be like (with the addition of about 50 degrees). Cheers!